← Estate of Mind — The Art of Selling Luxury Real Estate
Estate of Mind — The Art of Selling Luxury Real Estate
Scaling Smart: How to Grow a Profitable Real Estate Team
00:49:22
In this episode of Estate of Mind special guest John Simmons shares what it really takes to build a sustainable, profitable real estate team—without sacrificing your time, your values, or your sanity. From team culture and compensation models to leadership burnout and the courage to “fire yourself,” this conversation is packed with practical advice and honest insights for growth-minded agents and brokers.
Loading summary
Transcript72 lines
- [00:00]
Tammy Sims
Foreign welcome to A State of Mind, a podcast series all about motivating, inspiring and educating you in the art of selling luxury real estate. The podcast is brought to you by the Institute for Luxury Home Marketing. I'm Tammy Sims, lead trainer for the Institute and a full time real estate professional in St. Petersburg, Florida for more than two decades. In this episode, we're going to continue the conversation we started last month about future proofing your business and we'll go further down the path of understanding how you decide when it makes sense to grow your business versus slimming down how you sense market conditions and economic issues that play into those decisions. Today's podcast is brought to you in part by Real Marketing, the only marketing firm recommended exclusively by the Institute. Real marketing utilizes over 30 years of expertise and their products are built and customized for you to dominate any market anywhere. Go to realmarketing4you.com that's real marketing, the number4you.com. I'm here today with my co host Jack Miller, a 25 plus year veteran luxury agent with Onward Real estate in the greater Nashville, Tennessee market. Also joining us today is Institute Guild member John Simmons, co founder of C3 Real Estate Solutions in Fort Collins, northern Colorado. Since 2012, C3 has grown from just five agents to over 160 now with divisions for luxury, for land in house, property management, title and escrow, and mortgage services. John is one of the kindest individuals that I've met, aside from you, Jackson, and is always willing to share. So hello to both of you.
- [01:56]
Jack Miller
Hi Tammy. Hey John.
- [01:58]
John Simmons
Hello Tammy. Hello Jack.
- [02:00]
Tammy Sims
So John, I want to let you get us started and tell us a little bit about your journey because I know that it is, it is rich and I think that it would be good for, for our audience to, to kind of hear how you got to where you are today.
- [02:15]
John Simmons
Tammy. I got my license back in 2006 and I joined a prominent company in our area. But quickly I realized how much work every transaction entails. And even before I could hire a personal assistant, I hired one because I didn't like the minutiae, the writing down the driving directions on three separate applications to order photography and measurements and staging and home warranties. Before I even launched my career, I had support. And let me tell you the reason why I wanted that support. Prior to getting into real estate, I was in the restaurant industry. You know, there I've always said that my priorities are faith, family, friends, fitness, financing and fun, right? But in the restaurant industry it was all work and then it was family and then it was faith and fitness was all the way down at the bottom, right? So I knew I wanted to be independent to manage my own schedule. You know, there's nobody to blame other than myself for my success or my time off with my wife. Later I ended up having my kids. So back in, in 2007, that's when I hired my, my first assistant who could support me so I could direct and focus my time on my faith in my field. Right? So I think a lot of the assistants right now that are a lot of the top producers that I have here in northern Colorado, they're always asking about team structures and hey, when do you hire an assistant? I think it really all depends on them and where they're at in their walk of life. If they're sacrificing their priorities, I mean, it's time to. My common answer to them is you can't afford to not have an assistant, right? Based off of your priorities, let's say you do have faith or you do have fitness, you know, up there at the top. Well, you can only do so much, right? So hire an assistant frees up your time for you to allot your time to the priorities of your life. You know, on top of that, I can tell you I've never had an assistant that didn't pay for themselves. Right? Meaning as a broker, you have their sphere now. They, they could be lead generating for you. So your income is greater and your time off is greater. So to me, that's a magical equation.
- [04:19]
Jack Miller
Absolutely.
- [04:19]
John Simmons
Jack and Tammy, we were joking earlier and I remember one of you said big isn't always better. I often quote that as well. Just say big isn't always better. I've devoted since 2007 until today to research of teams, proper team structures and my findings are all over the board. However, one, one common denominator is the fact that most teams are built off of egos. It's how many transactions, what's my sales volume, what's the gci? But you look at profitability and that's at the bottom, right? You have these teams of 20, 30, 40, 50, 100, you know, people. But the principles take away is less than what they're, you know, producing agents are. Right?
- [05:02]
Jack Miller
John, you're saying out loud what I have been saying for years. That's why I was kind of laughing when you said that. That's, that's a hard thing to say out loud to an audience like this, but it's completely true. I just. Real simple math. Oftentimes we'll look at teams in our own market. And we'll see the strictly or purely the number of people on the team and we'll look at the overall production of the team. And I looked at Robert, my business partner, say, you know what, there's two of us and we're producing X. There's 16 of them and they're producing X. The math is not working. Why do they, why would you want to have that much work and that many people? Now there's conversely, there's other teams in our market who have, you know, 15, 20 people and they got incredible production and it makes a lot of sense. That's a great point, hearing you say that out loud.
- [05:48]
John Simmons
And I would tell everybody listening to this, listen to Jack, you know, he is right. Bigger isn't better.
- [05:54]
Tammy Sims
But, but I'm also picking out. It's a, it's, it's about the value proposition, not just to the community, but to yourself. Right. So when you talk about wanting to start a team and get bigger and be the biggest picture in the billboard or on the magazine ad or whatnot, if you're just focused on that and on production and on the numbers, then you can completely forget about your core values. And we tell people all the time in the training, make sure that you have a vision and a mission statement of why you're doing this and what you want out of it. And John, you're reinforcing the fact that if you are able to focus on those priorities, that that is also an intangible takeaway of the bottom line.
- [06:43]
John Simmons
That's right. Free up your time. You know, my wife deserves time of me, my kids deserve time of me. You know, it's like, where are we directing our time and our energy? You know, I will say this like my most profitable team. Jack was a personal assistant that took all the, and I call them non income producing tasks. Right. And then I had one buyer's agent and that was it. So the three of us could divide and conquer. I mean, in 2012, I closed 136 transactions with one buyer's agent and one assistant and that was it. So when you, you read the Gary Keller's, you know, millionaire real estate agent, there's a lot of great team structures that are out there. You could figure out what's most suitable for you. I know what my weaknesses are. I know what my strengths are. Right, right. So I've always operated since I got my license and couldn't afford it, under a team structure. Now, organically, our company has grown, so we have changed our goals. You know, if I didn't have the past that I had. If Jesse didn't have the past that he had, we would not be a company of 160, you know, personnel. We call them family members. I love that family of 160 people. You know, some people might say, you have 160 people, that's 160 problems, right? 100 people's 100 problems. 30 is 30, you know, however, Jesse and I, we both love to coach, teach, train, empower, develop, mentor. We do feel as if we have the best position and job on the planet, meaning we still produce. So we are owner operators. We're still selling real estate. And I'll tell everybody, you make a better living selling real estate than you do leading. If you desire to get into that employing broker role, the running joke is, keep in mind the broker is broker than the brokers, right?
- [08:31]
Tammy Sims
Wait, wait. I've never heard of you, right? This is going to take a second. It took me a second. So I'm going to repeat that. The broker is broker than the agents and the brokers.
- [08:42]
Jack Miller
Than the brokers.
- [08:43]
Tammy Sims
Than the brokers, right?
- [08:44]
John Simmons
Yeah, than the brokers, right. Because you're on a salary, you are capped, right? Your agents are going to be out there producing. And another problem that I see is in this industry is, yes, big isn't always better, but you'll see these people start their companies and grow it and then they just start chasing their tail because they get 10 agents, it requires another assistant. So they hire more agents so that they can increase their bottom line. Right? Then they hire more agents and they need another assistant, then they need a manager, but their net profits never sees a significant increase. Right? That's the whole goal. It's like, why, why would we start a real estate company which is pretty much a non profit in our region? It's not lucrative. You're better off opening up a juice bar or a sub shop. Right? Those are companies that are making money in our industry. It's like, hey, come work for me. Keep 100% of your commissions. Right? So it's a challenge and it's such a teeter totter. And you have to decide what is it that I want? You know, I love to make money. That's how I provide for my family. Hence the high level of service. Hence, when I met Tammy, this has helped, this institute has helped propel my business to the next level. Right? But I'm also satisfied internally by helping others, you know, so you take somebody off the street, you take a young graduate from university, you take an old School person that has never had finances as part of their equation and you help them to achieve financial freedom. There's an internal reward for that and I'm filled by that. And I often say I've made my millions, right. I've made my money. I tripped over, you know, deals over the last since I got my license. But this now feeds me. So if I get tired of the agents, I have my customers. If I get tired of my customers, I have my agents. So I do get the best of both worlds. I could tell you this and the downturn. So let's say 2021 was heyday. Everybody was making money. For most realtors and companies, it was the most profitable, the busiest season we have had in years.
- [10:41]
Jack Miller
Sure, right.
- [10:42]
John Simmons
2022, 30% decrease in transactions. 2023, another 30 decrease in transactions. That's a challenge when you own a company, right. Because our expenses go up. But yet transactions and sales volume was going down and then who takes the burden of all the expenses? So that's the stuff that you highly have to consider if you're looking at growing from a team to a company. Right. We scaled intentionally after we had around 50 licenses, we scaled intentionally and strategically so we did not grow fast. But that was so we could have our ancillary businesses. We started our property management company, our mortgage company, our title company, so we could have those streams of income coming to the company as well. Right. So it took I'd say 15 years when we started the journey of what's our team structure going to be now? We've had C3 for 13 years and I would say it's probably five years ago where we said we, we want 150 of the most elite agents on the planet. That's it. You know, it used to be we wanted to be another quality company in northern Colorado. Then we changed that goal to we want to be a quality company, you know, in the nation. And now we are. We want to be. We want to have the top 150 most elite people. And it's not necessarily based off of production, but it's based off of the, the caliber of the person.
- [12:04]
Tammy Sims
Right. And that's something that I see. So I follow you on Facebook on social media and I see when you announce someone new on your team and something that speaks to me loud and clear every time that you bring someone on, it's someone who's going to match the culture. And I know that culture is one of the hallmarks of C3 and carries into every division. So how do you identify people People that share, that share your values and, and your culture.
- [12:39]
John Simmons
Now, those are great questions, Tammy. I mean, we're looking at the three Cs. Which characters? Number one, right? Every man and woman has a character, kind of. What is it? Are they going to add value to our company culture? That's the second C. And then what's their commitment level? That's the third C. Commitment encompasses everything. I mean, it's more so, you know, relationship with their. Their spouse, their children, the community, you know, the commitment at work to master, you know, the industry that we're in, culture. We do ask some culturally based questions, personal questions, to where we can get to know these people personally and professionally prior to giving them a position. I have been known to hire people that have secondary jobs, but they have assured me through some of the questions that they will cross their T's, dot their I's. They're professional on the field and in the battlefield, how they handle conflict, their communication skills, negotiation skills, administrative skills. They've shown to me that they will be compliant. We've given them an opportunity. We haven't been wrong yet with any of them. There's others that companies will not hire. They've never closed a transaction. These are, these are educators and, you know, professors to preachers, firefighters, law enforcement veterans. We have chemists, we have paralegals. They're professionals that are out there. They're involved with the chamber, they're involved with the community. I mean, I could see who you are. You know, we'll ask questions as to what some of the most recent books that you've read, right? Stock them online, go to social media. You can see who these people are. And I'd be open and honest. If I see something that's of a concern, I'll talk to them about it. I hired a gentleman. I won't say his name here, but I hired him straight from unc. I loved everything about him. A big tackle that he played on the football team for six years. Big guy with dreadlocks, looks intimidating. I loved everything about this young man. And I'm pulling him up on social media while I'm doing the interview, and I see beer bottles and you can see his eyes were red and he was giving the bird. I just did that on zoom, right? He was giving a double birdie. And I looked at this gentleman and I said, sir, I said, I love everything about you. I said, I have one question for you. So if I was one of your friends that I needed to help me with the biggest transaction in my life, like Would I hire my this? And I turned the computer around and I showed it to him. You just see the blood, you know, head. And he gave me all the right answers. You know, who he was, his family, who he wants to be. That guy's now been in our industry for gosh, 15, 16 years. And he's a professional, you know.
- [15:16]
Tammy Sims
Did he take that post down?
- [15:17]
John Simmons
Yeah, he did. The next day, took that photo down. That was a college photo. Having fun. But be careful, you know, what's the perception? And I'm the believer of there's not a perfect person in my company, but they're all committed to doing better and being better people. So the level of training that we have here as well certainly helps. You know, we have professors that come in and help us with conflict resolution skills and personal family and marriage, to parenting, to all the business stuff that we need in our industry. But that shows the level of commitment that these people here have.
- [15:52]
Tammy Sims
I love it. Jack, how often have you and I talked about professional standards and ethics and, and, and things that go into us developing relationships with, with our colleagues?
- [16:04]
Jack Miller
Oh, absolutely. We had an agent recently who's a big producer in our market. He's not top producer, but he's a very consistent producer and sells some high end property who wanted to join our company. And our, our CEO asked me casually my thoughts on this age. I said I like him. I said some folks, you know, don't seem to be real fond of him. But I had some business with him and it was, went terrific and seemed like a nice guy. Interestingly enough, she surveyed a couple other colleagues of mine that I have a lot of respect for females and, and we found out that he was a different person socially than he was in terms of professionally and said a lot of inappropriate things to other agents in a professional setting also that made them really uncomfortable and it was a, it was a habit. It was, this was not a one off kind of thing. This is a habitual character issue. And so that's when it comes down to culture, we realize quickly it's like it doesn't matter how much you produce. That's not going to fit in our culture. And we don't want that as part of our company. So I think that's so important. I love hearing you say that, John. There was something else you said I thought was interesting. When you're talking about teams and you talked about size 20, 30, 40, and we do these super teams, you'll have 30, 40, 50 people on a team. When do you decide that the team is still a good fit for the company. And when you might should consider taking that team and creating your own company in our current market, what would you say? What are the things you would evaluate and look at?
- [17:37]
John Simmons
Now we're looking at compliance, Jack. I mean that is a great question. And we do have some heavy hitters. I mean there's agents here that we've paid over $2 million in GCI with small teams. I don't have a mega team. The largest team that I have is a team of four that's here at C3. But again, we've always said quality over quantity. If you close five deals, may they be compliant. If you close 100 plus deals, may you be compliant. If you're getting sloppy, if you're not returning calls, you're frequently getting complaints from your own customers. Everybody else that's around that closing table going to assess that, we're going to look at your checklists, right? Compliance. Try to train you, help you to be organized so you can take that take on that volume but not damage our brand. Right. We want that quality over quantity. We've released two top producers in the last five, six years. Don't care about the bottom line. We're just not desperate. More so than we care about our brand. I mean, these are people that I would get complaints time and time again for lack of compliance, sloppiness, or some of them were character issues. I'm not just going to fire you. Like we're going to talk about it. And if you're willing to change, great, we have a match. If you're not willing to change, it's back to that other phrase. Since. Since it's principals that are probably going to listen to the zoom classes, you know, you need to hire slow and you need to fire fast. And that's, you know, I'm looking in the mirror because I'm guilty. You know, I hire slow. That's something we've always done great at. And we have a two person interview like let's identify these people. Let's really get to know them before we sign the bottom, the dotted line, Right. We don't want to make a mistake because that's costly to the culture, the staff members, the managers, the other agents that are part of C3. And you could destroy your company as quickly as you built it. But firing fast, that has not been in my vocabulary. I'm always the one that. I will train you. I will train you. I will train you. I'll help you.
- [19:34]
Tammy Sims
One more chance. One more chance.
- [19:36]
John Simmons
Yeah. And then there's 10 chances. But then by the time you finally let them go and your agents are clapping, you know, you know, you realize.
- [19:43]
Tammy Sims
That you waited too long.
- [19:45]
John Simmons
Yeah, right. So when agents are, they see somebody, a particular person within the office and they turn around to go work from home instead. That's a problem that needs to be addressed.
- [19:54]
Tammy Sims
Yeah, right.
- [19:55]
John Simmons
So recently we just had the wrong person in the wrong position. And that drove our company culture to the worst culture position we've ever been in. It wasn't the market, it was an individual that just didn't align. And even when saying, hey, we'll we're going to send them to a couple leadership courses, that gentleman said, I'm not going to change. I would have kept them, but my real estate partner says, then we're not the right fit for you. And that has stood with me saying, again, higher, slow, fire, fast, because it will disrupt the company. One person ended up following that person to the next company, which shows you he really didn't have the buy in of the agents. On top of that, there was confusion with others. And so some people go independent or they try to open up their own company. But your question, Jack, as far as when everybody has to identify that, I'm quick to stick to your assistant and a buyer's agent if all you want is the money, if you love to coach and teach, sacrifice comes with that. Right. Like the leaders that are out, I tell my, my managing brokers here, they've all stepped into this position and I frequently have to remind them that, that leaders do not sail the calm waters. You're dealing with garbage, you're dealing with challenges, if you will. You can edit that if you want, Tammy.
- [21:19]
Jack Miller
We know what it is.
- [21:21]
John Simmons
Yes, it's not for everybody, but if you're passionate about, will certainly be rewarded, you know, but you have to have thick skin to be a leader of a larger company. So we had to dig deep and say, man, do we just continue to sell, sell, sell with 3 person team or do we grow something? And I'll tell you, the first office we opened up, Tammy and Jack, we wanted 22 agents. That's how many seats would have fit in that office. 22 agents that committed to RCS and who we were, we filled it. That was the problem. All of a sudden we had 30. 30. We had 35 licenses in that office. Several.
- [21:58]
Tammy Sims
And 22 seats.
- [22:00]
John Simmons
Exactly several of them which commuted from Greeley, Colorado. So we asked him, we said, man, if we had an office in Greeley, would you stay at C3 or would you Office out of the Greeley office. They said, oh my gosh, John, like we'd office out of C3. Really? Right. They were commuting there because there they got the systems of technology, the staff support, the leadership. They were willing to commute 35 minutes just to be a part of the company. So because of that, we opened up C3 Grill Greeley. We filled it. We opened up C3 level and we filled it. So kind of the growth kind of happened organically. And that's when we pivoted and we said, man, we need X amount of volume listings, we need X amount of, you know, purchases, you know, borrowers that are obtaining loans for us to have these joint ventures. Right? And that's where real financial opportunity comes. As an employing broker, you know, if you don't have that, you can be stuck in that whirlwind of selling, selling, selling, hiring, hiring, hiring, increasing your labor line, but never increasing your profit margins. Right? So you grow to continue to own a nonprofit. The JVS has helped us, you know, even through these last two years of challenging times. We are in the red right now. Again, part of being an owner, as far as the drop in production because of the industry, now I can look at the stats and tell you at least our agents are out producing the market because I can see what the other companies are down and my agents aren't down as much. So it shows that our systems are working. Never content, always moving forward, but they're working.
- [23:26]
Tammy Sims
You were talking organically about how you grew the business. And I think that's like, really one of the things that we're talking about today is you just gave us straight up how you grew the business and then, you know, organically and then you watch things. And just because the market shift goes down doesn't mean that you, you know, throw the baby out with the bath water. You just have to, you, you have to keep an eye on that and know that your agents are outperforming the others. And I think, I think that's also one of the things that people don't realize, whether you're a solo practitioner, whether you're part of a, a team, whether you got a large team, or whether you decide to open your own company. We've talked about that. This is not for the faint of heart. It's also not for those that spend as quickly as they earn. And so the ability to save reserves and plan for that proverbial rainy day, I have seen that be an absolute cause for long term success. Or very rapid failure from people who weren't able to beg that out. I mean, for every Uber driver that I use in every state who has a real estate license, they are not in the position to be able to manage that long term. Right? To make the investment that it takes for the time that it takes to generate revenue and then in a slow market, because there's always going to be highs and lows.
- [25:03]
John Simmons
So if it wasn't for our own production, I mean, I would. I wouldn't. I would not say that we would have folded by now because we love what we do, but it has certainly helped. You know, both Jesse and I were top producers. You know, prior, we were rainmakers. So we. We still have that production, right? We can still float the entire company with our own production without producing being out there. It would be a big challenge right now. My heart says I would still be here, you know, doing it, because I love the people. Never let them go. The tides are going to turn. How can we get out of this together? My real estate partner, probably not. He probably would fold if he wasn't selling and the company's losing money. And he'd probably go guide some fly fishing trips in Alaska, because that's where he comes from, you know. But it has been an incredible journey, I could tell you that, Tammy. It's. I mean, even before Jesse and I started our partnership, because both of us were top producers at our previous company, we had interviewed, you know, multiple attorneys, we interviewed multiple partnerships that failed, multiple partnerships that succeeded to take on the advice. What should we do? Are we making the right decision? Because we have an incredible book of business. Are we making the right decision? Every. A lot of people are telling us, avoid a partnership at all cost. So we had to navigate through that and decide, you know, what are we going to do in our partnership? I'm open. We are 50, 50 partners. I had a bigger database, more production, more years in service than he had. But I also had a child. He had no children, so he's more committed to the work. I don't like the synergy that a 4951 partnership brings. So to me, we were equally yoked from the start. And something that has kept us together now for 14 years, 13 years at C3, is the fact that, you know, we do meet regularly. You know, if we have to massage our partnership agreement, we'll do that. Critical conversations, new initiatives at the company level. We don't always see eye to eye, but we seek legal counsel, you know, whenever we have a stalemate. Or a decision that, you know, we're both. We both want to go in a different direction. So. And I'm happy to share, you know, a lot of. A lot of the structure that we have within our partnership agreement, you know, lessens it. We've learned along the way, mistakes that we've made along the way in hopes that others will succeed. But I always say you have to have a passion to be an employee, broker, owner, anywhere across the country because of how challenging it is. So, I mean, we had to decide, do we want to franchise or do we want to start our own thing?
- [27:30]
Tammy Sims
Sure. Those pros and cons, there's no end to the decisions that you have to make. And, Jack, I know in your career, after the market crashed in 2008, you and your business partner made the decision not to go again in the direction of a team. Tell me the kinds of things that you two were talking about, the things that played into your decision to go in a completely different direction than this.
- [28:03]
Jack Miller
Yeah, for us, it was interesting because when we started our team, there were only two other teams in the entire marketplace.
- [28:09]
Tammy Sims
Back in 98, you're dating yourself, Jack.
- [28:11]
Jack Miller
I know that. I realize that. And also, we were the first team for our company, so there's no. Not even a company policy on how to deal with teams. So it started with me and my business partner, Robert, and then we added people one by one. And the reason we started adding people was because we had these frustration moments when we were drowning and we needed some help and bring somebody on. And that seemed, oh, this works much better. It's more profitable, it's more enjoyable, and that goes really well. We're generating business, you know, too much again for everybody. And then we're adding another person. We got to the point where we had, I think, six or seven people on the team total and really good production. And then the market shifted dramatically. And so when the market shifted and we kind of waited for the dust to settle and we were reevaluating when business started taking off again, you know, there's a lot of responsibility that comes. And, John, you see this when you're the head of a team or head of a company and you're bringing somebody in, you know, you had on a team, you know, this is not for the photo op. And I think that's what you meant. You alluded to this earlier. It's not for the ego stroke. It's not for the photo op. It should be fulfilling a need, a need that you have more business you can keep up with and you're going to bring somebody in to help share the wealth and then teach them and train them and help them and grow as a team. Grow your business. If you're just adding people to the picture at the header on the. On the website or the magazine or whatever it is, you're not really accomplishing anything. And so Robert and I looked at this taming. We were like, you know, we had really, really good production, but we realized we were doing much larger transactions and much fewer transactions. That was the key. We're like, wait a minute. We don't need a team. We're only doing. There was a time we were doing 80, 85 transactions a year, and then we're doing 25 to 30 transactions a year, but making a whole lot more money because they're much at a higher price. That's right. And we were committed to the luxury price point and committed to this level of service our clients expected. So we decided to focus on that instead. And then there was this balance. And you alluded to this earlier, John, I want to share something. We want to get your take on this. We realized we had a good balance where we could have a life and generate a good, healthy income. And it felt like we were in balance. And if we were number one in the company or number one in anything, that's great. If we weren't, I'm okay with that. Because my goal is not to be the number one of anything. My goal is to have a quality of life and to do a great job for our clients. We had a. I've shared this with Tammy before. I think recently, about six months ago or so, I was working with another agent who is also a large producer in our marketplace, been in business for a long time. And she. We were do in a transaction together. And it would take her days to return a phone call to me. I would text her, and it would take her two days to return the text and days to return a call. Or she set up meetings and canceled time after time. And I finally called her to the carpet on. I said, look, I said. I said, I'm not accustomed to interacting this way. I need better responsiveness. I know our clients deserve better responsiveness and what I'm getting them. I'm really disappointed how that's going. And she's. Her response to me was, jack, you don't understand. I work 247 for my clients. I'm working all the time. And she says, you, you're going to the cabin on the weekends, you're going on vacations, you've got a family and you got a business partner who helps you. And he says, I'm working on my own 24 7. He says, it's just a lot. I'm doing the best I can. And I said. I said to her, I'm doing this by choice. I said, I'm working with a business partner so that I can have a life. That's why. And John, I'm sure you've seen people like that in your own marketplace. How do you coach your own agents and talk to them about that?
- [31:49]
John Simmons
Man, we're. We're always talking about service, Jack, and we align. Align very well. You know, I often say you need to hire the support to give you the support to get you to the next level of business. In other words, most people will wait until they start dropping the ball. They're not communicating effectively. They're not returning calls and emails in a timely manner. Then they realize, oh, my business is up here. I need an assistant. They hire an assistant into the production that. The level of production that they're at, I kind of hire for the. You kind of see what's in the pipeline. I know the life that I want to have. I know the healthy relationship that I want with my wife and my kids and, you know, with my faith and my parents and my mom. And, you know, Tammy and I shed some tears earlier just because I'm dealing with my dad passing right now. Tammy's dealing with her mom that just passed. And I do not want my life on earth to be a mistake. And I want my wife to say she had an incredible husband and my kids to say they had an incredible dad. But the cert. The this, there's. Let me talk about two things, Jack, that came to mind. Ninja selling, I know a lot of people are familiar with that, talks about, you know, the ninja is somebody who works less and makes more. Right? It was the person that was in the office the least amount of time. It's high income per hour. It's Socratic selling. It's built through relationships like that has always resonated with me, and I've lived my life to that. Right? There's a movie that's out there, and it was In Pursuit of Happiness by Will Smith. That guy, to me, was a ninja. You'll have to watch it because he had, let's say, six hours to make X amount of phone calls. Otherwise he'd be sleeping in the. In the bathroom with this kid. Watch that movie. To me, that was a ninja on steroids. And then the third thing that stands out to me is my youngest son was born. My oldest son was born premature. Right. So my wife was flight for life from northern Colorado all the way down to Denver. This is after multiple miscarriages. Now I'm going to move, miscarry it. You know, she was six months pregnant, going into labor, you know, on this other attempt. And I get down to the hospital and the nurses are all frantic and they're doing this and they're doing that and they're checking vitals and dilation. And I saw the birthing doctor for five minutes. He came in, she delivered, handed off to the, to the nurses and he was out. I look at all this and I'm like, who do you, who do we remember the most? The birthing doctor. Who got paid the most? The birthing doctor. So I've always had that, that that's what I want to be. And I think a lot of times as realtors, we're doing non income producing tasks. It's taking our time away from other priorities of life. Right. So hire that assist, identify what your strengths and weaknesses are. Have that staff member do everything that's. Yeah, I'm consuming for you. Right. And delegate that and delegate it effectively. As you grow your business, you might need to hire additional support. But that goes back to my. The best teams that I've ever seen in real estate have one admin personnel and one buyer's agent, right? So that frees up an enormous amount of your time so that you can focus on your, your services, your marketing. Right. The communication, getting your seller's property, property sold. Right. And I, my buyer's agent was with me for around 10 years and then she just retired this year. All my people are retiring before I'm retir retiring. That's a problem. It's also as a leader, it's a reward if you help them, they helped you.
- [35:10]
Tammy Sims
John, I wanna, I wanna make one slight vocabulary adjustment or so. When you talk about non income producing tasks or that whole concept, I think it's about identifying the highest and best use for your own individual talents because all of those things are necessary. That birthing doctor could not do what he does without the nurses and the person who checks in the patient and does all the admin. So all of them play into the income producing thing. But I think it's about identifying for each of us the highest and best use that allow us to deliver the best of what our strengths are.
- [35:56]
John Simmons
But here's the challenge with that, Tammy, is these realtors come and they say, I've always inputted my own properties into the mls. I'm a graphic designer. I'm going to do my own brochure. I'm going to do my own postcard. I'm going to do my own Craigslist posting. I'm going to do my own. That's not your job.
- [36:14]
Tammy Sims
Right.
- [36:14]
John Simmons
Your job is to be face to face with your clients. Right. It's to negotiate terms. It's to be in the closing table. So, you know, there's this one class that I taught, and it's called fire yourself. Like, even if you are good at something, my wife is a great house cleaner. She's incredible. But her kids deserve more of her time. She needs to fire herself to hire a cleaner, even if that cleaner isn't as good as she is. It freed up her time so she could focus on something else. Right. So I have those. Those agents will cripple themselves because they micromanage and they do everything themselves. Because I'm better at it. I'm better with buyers. I'm better.
- [36:52]
Tammy Sims
Yep.
- [36:52]
John Simmons
Is that the best use of your time? Right.
- [36:55]
Tammy Sims
That's where I'm going after. What's the highest and best use?
- [36:57]
John Simmons
Yeah, it could be a challenge, you know, so you really have to look at it and say, yeah, what's the best use of my time? What am I passionate about?
- [37:04]
Tammy Sims
Yeah.
- [37:05]
John Simmons
But oftentimes I'm like, you need to. It's time to fire yourself. You know, you need to hire somebody for that. So you could do this. You know, Are you delivering signs? Are you staking your own signs in frozen earth and through the weed liner and clay and rocky soil? Or are you delivering. Are you delivering brochures? There's courier services that you could pay $25 to go deliver those brochures for you. There's high school kids that'll mow grass for you. So.
- [37:27]
Tammy Sims
Exactly. Something. Something that Alan Haynes and the cyber stars used to always say back in the 80s when this whole technology thing was going on. Right. Like, don't try to do it yourself. Just hire a teenager.
- [37:38]
John Simmons
That's right.
- [37:39]
Tammy Sims
Just hire a teenager. You know, there's one, one other thing that, that, that, that you said a few minutes ago that I want to kind of go down that path. And that was if you're making changes, having to decide whether, whether you want to build a team, whether you want to be with a franchise, whether you want to create independent. I remember in, in 2008, 2009. Right. Like when the market just absolutely crashed, we happened to be my mom and I and my brother was with us at the time, and one transaction manager functioning as a team, and we were with a large franchise, and we realized that we were surrounded by 50 agents in that office who were all complaining that there was no business. Right. Like, the culture, as you say, was really bad. And one day, mom happened to drive by a storefront on, like, the most visible waterfront streets, like the Rodeo Drive, the sixth Avenue. Right.
- [38:46]
John Simmons
Yeah.
- [38:46]
Tammy Sims
And it was an optometry shop that had been there for decades. Right. And all of a sudden, she saw the paper up in the windows. She's like, oh, ho, ho, ho. And so she did some digging and found out, and they were indeed going to be leasing that space. And she evaluated it, and we sat down as a team and we said, okay, here's the deal. We could go get that space, but it means leaving the franchise and trading those fees to go independent and to create our own company. Right. And that was a huge risk. Especially, you know, what a great time to go independent. Right. To open your own company when there's nothing going on. Turned out to be the best time ever. But also, as we opened our company, we still functioned as that small team. And together we decided mom set a rule. In order to come work for our brokerage, she had to have given birth to you.
- [39:46]
John Simmons
She had to what?
- [39:47]
Tammy Sims
Have given birth to you. Right. It was the true epitome of the family company. Right. But there were people who were. Who were clamoring to come work for us, and mom had no interest in taking the responsibility for people other than those that she had given birth to. And she could, you know, manage us appropriately. Right.
- [40:07]
John Simmons
That's hilarious.
- [40:08]
Tammy Sims
But it was really something. And so we talk about all those decisions at various different stages. And so there's big, there's small, there's. There's franchise, there's independent. And. And just so many things go into those decisions. For sure.
- [40:24]
Jack Miller
I. I think a lot of people, too. They. Sorry. I think a lot of people, too. You know, I. I've heard the description of, you know, when you're learning. Learning to swim, you have to let go of one side of the pool to get to the other. You can't have your hands in both places.
- [40:38]
Tammy Sims
Yeah.
- [40:38]
Jack Miller
And so that. It's a little risky, it's a little scary, but sometimes you just have to do that. And I know that when. When I. Of course, when I started in real estate, Robert, my business partner, joined me six months later. And this will paint the picture really well to what you were describing earlier, John. That is the six month of real estate. I had six closings, and I was doing everything myself and I. I was. And back then, we didn't have transaction managers, and only the very top agents had assistance. Now, that wasn't me either. So bringing on a business partner meant suddenly half of my income is going to go away. But I knew I couldn't keep doing this pace and, and grow my own business any further. And so it was the best thing I ever did. The two of us together do way more than each of us could do individually. It's a synergy has worked really, really well through the years, but it's a scary thing to, to do that. But you. But sometimes you got to. When you get to that point where you're. Because what happened during that time, John? I was so focused on the detail, the closing details. I was focused on everything. And as a new agent, there was no repeat or referral business. It was only what I generated. And so I was so focused on the. I quit generating. So after the six month, Robert quit a job that he had for 15 years and joined me. He gave up a salary, bonuses, a company car, company trips, all these wonderful perks. And the next month I had zero closings. And the next month we had zero closings again. And Robert said, I'm going to have to go work at Home Depot. But, but we quickly realized the reason that happened is because I. My focus was on the wrong things. We weren't generating business. Um, and so when. And you said this earlier, you have to get ahead of it. You have to realize where you're going and not wait for it to get to that point. So there's a. That was a big learning, a big teachable moment for me in my own business right in the very beginning. And we've carried that through to this day. We know when we need to look forward and change something to adapt to the market conditions we're in.
- [42:46]
Tammy Sims
Yeah.
- [42:46]
John Simmons
And oftentimes I see the wrong people trying to structure the wrong team or even start the wrong company. They're not ready. I think people really need to look at, you know, do I, Do I want a team? Do I want a company? You got to do your research for both. Right. If you're not a rainmaker, if you're not a top producer, what do you. What are you looking for a team for? You know, usually it's the people that are trying to save on costs. They're leaving a broker to start their own thing, not knowing the cost. It's what Tam was talking about. Now they have to have their own office, they have those expenses. Right now you have a profit and loss statement. Now you hire an employee, then eventually have a managing broker. They realize, well, geez, it was nicer over here. I could have been more profitable over here. You know, I do have, I would say 11 agents here that either had their own companies, have the abilities to run their own companies that choose to operate under our C3 umbrella because it's much more affordable for them. They realize these are those that are savvy, knowing I can make a better living here versus starting my own thing, you know, out there. And again, Jesse and I like to absorb a lot of the labor and the legal as far as dealing with the day to day and the ever, the ever weekly changes, daily changes that we have in this industry. Right. We're dealing with new protocols and new addendums and amendments and commission rules. And you're the one having to spend that time to create all that. So we love what we do right now, but it's not after sacrifice some financial loss that we are where we are today. I can't say that we've made a mistake. We love the size of our company. I would love to have maintained that 150, you know, of the best, you know, realtors that are out there, those that compete with you guys on a professional level and that's it. You know, we have identified ourselves as far as we don't want to grow more. And the biggest reason is because Jesse and I, we know what our enough is. There's companies that are trying to buy us right now and they want to take C3, you know, national or across Colorado. And I already had that corporate job. I had 35 restaurants in four states and that was sacrifice. Never saw my wife, right. So here it's like we've identified our region to northern Colorado and this is it. You know, if we lose one, we'll interview 10 and we'll hire the best person that we feel will match our company culture. So might we start another satellite office in another neighboring town? Maybe if we have the right leader and we have the bandwidth, you know, to do that. So I would say to have a company of this size, we've been fortunate because we do have, you know, Jesse and I's passion and history have put us where we're at right now. But we have incredible, incredible employees, staff members, we'd call them family members as well. We have an incredible leaders. You know, our managing brokers are the most experienced. You know, if 20, 30, 36 years in the industry. These are individuals leading other companies, so they know what they're doing. They're savvier than Jesse and I are. You know, we created this platform, but thankfully we attracted them. Well, they shoulder a lot of the responsibility, which gives John and Jesse some freedom to spend time, you know, with our family and our loved ones. So I did get criticized by a local employee broker on Facebook. He says, john doesn't have time for you. Look, he's always with his family. I mean, first off, I thought it was called social media and not business media. Right. Like, I don't know. But that was that. That resonated with me. And I'm like, you know what? Good. Because always put my family in front of them.
- [46:12]
Jack Miller
Exactly. That was my point earlier when I shared the anecdotal story I shared a few minutes ago. No, I think what I'm hearing from you, John, and what I heard from you, Tammy, earlier, with your mom setting up shop and saying she's only hiring the one she gave birth to, is in both scenarios, whether it's a. Whether it's the company of five, in your case, Tammy, or the company. Company of 150. I'm hearing quality over quantity.
- [46:40]
Tammy Sims
Yeah, right.
- [46:41]
Jack Miller
And that's kind of theme that I'm hearing. And. And in my own story as well, we're choosing quantity over quality. Quality. Excuse me. Quality over quantity. Quality of life over just having the, you know, sheer numbers. And as the person who said that you said you were criticized on social media. That's essentially what I was receiving from this other agent saying, you're going to the cabin, you're doing stuff with your family on vacation. Yes, I am. And I'm going to continue to, you know, I don't. I want to have a life first, and real estate helps me have that life. I think. I think that's for all of us. That's what we really ought to be. Not to get preachy, but I think that's what the goal really ought to be is having that right when you.
- [47:20]
John Simmons
Either have to have the systems or you have to have the support to be able to do that.
- [47:23]
Jack Miller
That's right.
- [47:25]
John Simmons
Right. So. Well, thankful to have incredible support here. You know, I had one assistant for. She's been with me since my restaurant days, since Johnny Carino's days. So 25 years I've watched her grow up, get married to another employee from Johnny Carino's and have three kids, have another gal. She's been with me for 19 years. And then my right arm, right now is Tiffany Breitbarth a shout out to her. She's been with me for 15 years so we work well together and we counter each other so that each one of us has has a life while doing a high level of production, overseeing five different companies, five different PNLs and a lot of people it can be done with systems, organization and support.
- [48:02]
Tammy Sims
Well, I am grateful to both of you for being here today and I know we could keep going on and I look forward to meeting with each of you, Jack and John individually. So we get to carry on this conversation over dinner and wine wherever our paths will cross. But for now I have to wrap us up and so I want to thank all of you for for joining us on this episode of Estate of Mind, the art of selling Luxury Real estate. If you're interested in learning more about the Institute, you can find more at luxury home marketing.com if you like what you just heard, please share it with a friend. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review this podcast. And if you've got a hot topic that you'd like us to discuss in a future podcast, feel free to let us know. Send an email to infoxuryhome marketing.com thanks so much for listening.